WINNERS WILL BE PART OF THE QUEEN EXTRAVAGANZA LIVE TOUR
LAUNCHING IN 2012

AUDITIONS BEGIN SEPTEMBER 19

As part of this year’s celebration of Queen’s 40th anniversary, Queen drummer/songwriter/singer Roger Taylor is launching a North American talent search that will offer “s**t hot vocalists and musicians” the opportunity to star in the Queen Extravaganza Live Tour. Taylor will endeavour to assemble the most talented band to perform Queen’s music, outside of Queen themselves, of course, to carry on the celebration. Auditions begin September 19th at www.queenextravaganza.com and the tour, booked by powerhouse agency CAA, launches in 2012.

Auditions are open to vocalists, guitarists, drummers, bass players and keyboard players.

“The Queen Extravaganza will not be a traditional tribute show,” says Taylor. “It’s a brand-new show specially designed to enable fans to celebrate the music of Queen in a heart-stopping event.”

The Queen Extravaganza will bring the glorious music and live experience of Queen to a new generation of fans in cities across the US in 2012.

“It’s going to be spectacular” says Taylor. “It’s going to be very visual, there are going to be some shocks and some tremendous surprises. It will be a rock celebration in the royal tradition. ”

Beginning September 19, Taylor will launch a North American talent search via www.queenextravaganza.com to find players for a 5-piece band and three vocalists who will carry the tour. Taylor is fully hands-on in the creation of The Extravaganza, taking the role of producer and music director.

Coming on board to ensure the touring show will match the design and excitement of Queen at its best will be such rock tour heavyweights as stage designer Mark Fisher (U2, AC/DC, Muse, The Rolling Stones, Cirque de Soleil) and lighting designer Rob Sinclair (Adele, Vampire Weekend, Goldfrapp, Peter Gabriel), and for the auditions, Roger Taylor and a panel of renowned musicians.

The audition process involves two video audition rounds to be judged by both a panel of appointed judges and the public. Taylor will be present to judge the final audition round, which will be held live in Los Angeles in early December. In addition, VEVO, the world’s leading music video and entertainment platform, will unveil exclusive content from each audition round as well as and The Queen Extravaganza finals.

In a special tribute, VEVO will also showcase classic Queen videos including “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Another One Bites The Dust,” “We Will Rock You,” “Under Pressure,” “We Are The Champions,” Fat Bottomed Girls,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “You’re My Best Friend” across their platform over the next few weeks.

Taylor, a man whose drum skills and songwriting talents have contributed to over 300 million record sales and over 700 live concerts in every part of the world, says: “There are great musicians everywhere, and this is a really exciting challenge for us to try and unearth some of those musicians from the US.”

Together with band mates Brian May, John Deacon and the unforgettable Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor brought a new dimension to live music. The band has released a total of 18 chart-topping albums and 18 #1 singles, while selling more than 300 million albums worldwide, making them one of the biggest rock acts of all time. They’ve received seven Ivor Novello awards in the U.K., were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, the UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and even received their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in October 2002.

As the centerpiece in the 40th anniversary celebration, Queen’s entire 15-album studio catalog is being reissued in a series of deluxe editions. Every note is being tweaked, every piece of artwork is being cleaned, freshened up and resourced, wherever necessary, with the legendary Bob Ludwig doing the remastering, working from the original source material. The first installment, comprised of the first five LPs (QUEEN, QUEEN II, SHEER HEART ATTACK, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, A DAY AT THE RACES) was released May 17, the second installment (NEWS OF THE WORLD, JAZZ, THE GAME, FLASH GORDON, HOT SPACE) was just released on September 13 and the final installment is set to come out later this year.

September 5th would have been legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday. To mark the occasion, Queen streamed their historic 1986 concert Queen Live At Wembley Stadiumfor 48 hours on YouTube. Stars such as Katy Perry, members of Foo Fighters and My Chemical Romance took to YouTube to present video tribute to Mercury. The entire two day celebration garnered over 4 million views.

Google also paid tribute by posting worldwide a rare and extraordinary tribute to Freddie Mercury with a very special Google doodle on its homepage. The animated Google doodle was created to celebrate the life and talents of the legendary Queen frontman. The worldwide tribute from Google is something that doesn’t happen very often. Google has previously run video doodles for other legendary entertainers including John Lennon.